Asylum under Rudd: tough, or just shonky? - Labor is being tougher and more ruthless with asylum seekers than the Howard Government, according to an analysis of decisions made by Immigration Minister Chris Evans, where he rejected 97.6% of intervention applications since coming to power.

Rudd re-opens Derby's Curtin detention hell - With an election looming, Kevin Rudd becomes Howard-lite and his henchman all at once: the memory of the Curtin detention centre awakens fears of torture, vilification, being beaten up by guards and locked in grave isolation compounds.

World Outrage about Kevin Rudd's Big Asylum Freeze - From psychiatrist Jon Juredini to Malcolm Fraser, from human rights lawyer Greg Barns to Andrew Bartlett, outrage swelled fast around Kevin Rudd's processing freeze of Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers, and it went international within a week.

Labor chooses John Howard's Excision Zone - 'Refugee advocates have accused the Federal Government of abandoning its softer approach to asylum seekers.' An expose of Labor's ambivalence about John Howard's shocking refugee exclusion zone and its sneaky choice.

Coal Industry overheats Kevin's Climate - Anna Rose at the 2020 Summit: I found myself in the climate stream with representatives of coal mining companies including Xstrata and Shell, yet not a single person from an environment NGO such as Greenpeace ...

The ALP's me-too refugee policy - Just before the election, Kevin Rudd tells the ABC's 7.30 Report presenter Kerry O'Brien that he's prepared to turn boats back to Indonesia, a policy brazenly in contravention with Australia's obligations under the UN Refugee Convention.

The 2010 Anti-Smuggling Legislation - Do we want to punish smugglers, or secretly close our borders? See Project SafeCom's Senate Submission and share our doubts about this brazen law proposal that would land even Tampa Captain Arne Rinnan in jail as a smuggler.

The unthrown kids - All the photographs of the "children overboard" incident in 2001 - leaked to Project SafeCom after the incident: they show gratefulness. They show fathers who are tired, but moved. They show mothers who smile, in deep love for their children and thankfulness for the rescue...

Hadi Ahmadi: Smuggler or Escape Organiser? - Perhaps it is true that, contrary to what happens on the European smuggling routes and strategies, Australian 'smugglers' cannot and should not be called 'smugglers', because they simply bring refugees home to UN safety in Australia.

Alcatraz Down Under: Christmas Island - The monstrosity is complete. Like a gigantic scar cutting through the pristine wilderness, the Christmas Island detention centre blights not just the hillside of the island, but also the Australian psyche. We now have our own prison island.

Dark Dreams: Australian Refugee Stories

... by young writers aged 11-20 years

Edited by Sonja Dechian, Heather Millar and Eva Sallis

"These stories will remind you that these unbearable events did not happen far away, to people we pity from a distance - a view the nightly news, especially now, too easily encourages. These events and histories are carried in the heart and mind of the person next to you, these experiences are with us, beside us..." (Dr Eva Sallis, editor)

Another remarkable book has been published under auspices of Australians Against Racism, the result of many refugee stories that were submitted for the Australia Is Refugees Essay Competition, which ran in 2003 in primary and secondary schools around Australia.

Appraisal: Eva Sallis

This collection of 37 stories is an extraordinary witness account, written by young people. From Eva Sallis' website: Dark Dreams: Australian Refugee Stories is an anthology of essays, interviews, comments and short stories written by children and young adults aged 11-20 years. These young writers explore or imaginatively recreate the story of someone who came to Australia as a refugee. Most of these essays, interviews and stories were written on the basis of a live interview. These are the stories of extraordinary Australians the young authors found in their family, neighbourhood, and local communities; and in themselves.

This is a unique book in Australia. The stories are the finest of hundreds collected through an unprecedented nationwide schools competition in 2002, devised by writer Eva Sallis and run by Australians Against Racism Inc.

The essays and stories range in length from 700 words to 2,500 words and represent many different countries. Some focus on survival, some on horrors, some on the experiences and alienation of a new world. Some are stories of refugees still living in detention centres in Australia, and one is the unbearable story of a twelve-year-old SIEVX survivor, told by her fifteen-year-old friend, and capturing both their voices.

The longer works are often framed by one-liners or paragraphs of striking comment, epigraphs and observations from very young children. These stories are shocking, moving, and at times funny. Some are written with the quirky humour of children, others show the frank compassion and honest surprise of young Australians as they encounter experiences more terrible than their own. Some are the gut-churning stories from young voices of children just starting to rebuild lives here. These children's voices and children's views have the power to chasten us with the clarity of their understanding and revelation of the big issues now facing us.

This book is too diverse to be partisan in any sense. There are stories of escape from the holocaust, people smuggled from Poland and Germany; of survival in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia; of terrible boat journeys from Vietnam and other parts of South East Asia; and of the long roads and ongoing uncertainties of people fleeing Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries in recent years. Many stories show the shocking things humans do to each other; many others show the wonderful things that strangers can do. The total picture is a powerful indictment of war itself, all wars. And across the collection, there emerges the recurrent theme of friendship: friendships lost, broken, remembered and found, now in Australia.

These stories are unavoidably topical, disturbing and political. They are highly, provocatively readable.

Schools across Australia are trying to find ways to talk about refugees, terrorism and war. This book is well-poised have a huge impact in schools, particularly because it is written by children's peers. Dark Dreams has a key role to play in schools in 2004. [Source]

Acclaim: Phillip Adams

Trying to judge the entries to this extraordinary competition has given me both a heartache and headache. At the same time, it's been a great privilege. The demonisation of the refugees has been disgraceful - one of the uglier tactics in Australia's political history. But every bit as reprehensible as the demonisation was, to coin a phrase, the 'anonymisation'. The way, for example, the people on the Tampa remained just dots on the deck. Faceless, nameless, remote and abstract. We have not been allowed to know the refugees as human beings - as men, women and children, as mothers and husbands, sons and daughters. These stories change all that and force a personal response from the reader. What a pity Australia's bigots can't be persuaded to read these accounts. It might, just might, make them more understanding and compassionate. (Phillip Adams)

Important Notice about this item:

About the publication Sonja Dechian, Heather Millar, Eva Sallis (eds), Dark Dreams: Australian Refugee Stories (2004): This book is now out of stock, and we no longer supply it to our members or to the wider public. We suggest you could search for online second-hand bookshops to secure your copy.

"They did what they could to stay alive, and then they played soccer." (Helen Huynh, aged 16)

Review comments

I read the essays with curiosity and a great deal of emotion. The real treasures are the stories told by young refugees themselves, and by the children of people who fled to Australia a generation ago. Some of the more recent arrivals here have struggled with a language not their own, and have produced stories we will never be able to forget. Some of the pieces read as passionate polemic, others show the flair and freshness of short stories. Their determination, their urgency of expression, and their lack of sentimentality have moved us deeply. They would melt the hardest heart. It has been a privilege to read these essays, and a terribly difficult job to try to rank them. (Helen Garner)

To read this whole collection of testimony accounts and of stories learned through the accounts of others has been an experience both painful and rewarding ... The pain is what is still close to the surface, and the accounts which communicate the traumatic events sear us with their authenticity and their humanity. Several pieces which are rough hewn from direct experience reach us through the difficulty of a language foreign to the narrators, but in the most telling of these there is a rawness that sears. From Holocaust survivors, Vietnamese boat people on to contemporary refugees fleeing oppression in Afghanistan or Iraq, Sri Lanka or Africa, these are accounts we must heed, and learn from. (Tom Shapcott)

Reading these entries has reminded us of the suffering of so many in our community. We have been struck by the sympathy and empathy of those who entered. Many spoke of their newfound realisation of the plight of the refugee. Some entrants wrote of their own family members, others went to extraordinary lengths to meet strangers and hear their stories. In every case, the hearing of that story, first hand, had a profound effect on the listener. The strength of the contributions is very heartening, holding out hope that through the children of this country we may see our nation develop in a compassionate, inclusive and responsible way. (Meme McDonald and Libby Gleeson)

An anthology of essays and short stories written by children and young adults aged 11-20 years. These young writers explore or imaginatively recreate the story of someone who came to Australia as a refugee. These are the stories of extraordinary Australians the young authors found in their family, neighbourhood, and local communities; and in themselves.

This is a unique book in Australia. The stories are the finest of hundreds collected through an unprecedented nationwide schools competition in 2002, devised by writer Eva Sallis and run by Australians Against Racism Inc.

The essays and stories range in length from 700 words to 2,500 words and represent many different countries. Some focus on survival, some on horrors, some on the experiences and alienation of a new world. Some are stories of refugees still living in detention centres in Australia, and one is the unbearable story of a twelve-year-old SIEVX survivor, told by her fifteen-year-old friend, and capturing both their voices. These stories are unavoidably topical, disturbing and political. They are highly, provocatively readable.